POETRY
Including Lyrical Poetry, Short Stories, Flash Fiction, Novels, Essays and Academic Journal Articles and books, my writing spans a wide range of Genres and topics. Down below on this Side, Please find some recent texts and Projects. Scroll down for Lyrical Poetry, Flash Fiction and other Genres ofn this Page
Saint Jerome in a Landscape
Saint Jerome in a landscape, after Rembrandt c. 1649
The lion, seen from behind, wears a mane of midnight.
If he could talk he would talk of lying down with lambs,
of the hole of the asp, and of a sore paw. The sting, sempiternal. The same wood as the crown of thorns.
His friend, the saint, would be his listener. Jerome,
a little man at one with the rock of an ancient castlehill.
The ilegible scrub of his hands: pages, or a tablet, are filled
with holy scripture. His stylo: a three inches thorn, smoothed.
Behold, isn’t he wearing the travel hat and an aura of clouds
that you can also see in Tischbein’s Goethe
in the Roman Campagna?
And above the visitor of the Onehunga cemetary
on this hazy Sunday afternoon? Watching the incoming
tide and planes, a charcoal horizon obscuring far away lands he remembers;
his brother who had sold the father’s inheritance
for three sacks of millet then went into the bush
to listen to the wild bees’ hymns
in the cathedral of a dead lion’s rib cage.
[Legend has it that Saint Jerome who translated the Bible from Greek into Latin (the Vulgate Latin Bible) had a pet lion. Saint Jerome had befriended the lion by pulling out a thorn from the lion’s paw.]
****
Der heilige Hieronymus in einer Landschaft,
nach Rembrandt c. 1649
Rückansicht des Löwen mit einer Mähne aus Mitternacht.
Spräche er, so spräche er vom Lagern mit Lämmern,
dem Otternloch nah, der wunden Tatze, dem Stachel
vom selben Holz wie die Dornenkrone;
dem Freund, dem Heiligen, Hieronymus, ihm lauschend,
einem Männlein, aus Burgfels gewachsen;
dem Gestrüpp seiner Hände, Blätter haltend
oder ein Tablett, alles voll Heiliger Schrift. Sein Griffel:
ein drei Zoll langer Dorn, geglättet.
Schau, trägt er nicht den Reisehut, den Wolkenschein,
der später sogar auf Goethe in der Campagna kam;
den Hintergrund jenes Mannes, der den Onehunga-Friedhof besucht an diesem diesigen Sonntagnachmittag?
Das Eintreffen der Flut und der Jets erwartend,
den dunklen, mit Zeichenkohle gezogenen Horizont,
der ganze Länder verbirgt, die er erinnert;
den Bruder, der das Vatererbe verkauft für einige Sack Hirse
und dann in den Busch geht, Hymnen der Wildbienen
zu lauschen in jener alten Kathedrale
im Brustkorbs eines toten Löwen.
[Der Legende nach hatte der Heilige Hieronymus, der die Bibel aus dem Griechischen ins Lateinische übertrug (die Vulgata-Bibel) einen Löwen als Haustier. Der heilige Hieronymus hatte sich mit dem Raubtier angefreundet, nachdem er einen Dorn aus der Pfote des Löwen gezogen hatte.]
On Our Lady's Bedstraw
(Close to Tipping Point)
On Our Lady’s Bedstraw (close to tipping point)
In hindsight, they will say:
Those were the days close to tipping point.
Sunsets over Raglan were crimson
like the wounds of Koalas in eucalyptus forests
ablaze three thousand kilometres away.
Even the actuarial mathematicians were alarmed,
and the journalists of Murdoch papers
which ran articles about home remedies
to calm the nerves: St John’s Wort,
hemp, good old-fashioned getting pissed.
And the mysterious properties
of Our Lady’s Bedstraw
believed to be strewn
in the Inn’s stable when Mary gave birth
to her baby son; and which later
became the stuffing of pillows
in Medieval almshouses.
A scholar in Leipzig managed to extract
Neanderthal DNA without bones or teeth
just by sweeping up dust from caves
where early humans were believed to have slept,
feasted, defecated, and to have produced images
of mastodons, gods, and their own hands.
Someone suggested to send
paleoanthropologists to Bethlehem
to scour the Church of the Nativity’s floor
and clone the Son of God.
Perhaps he could give some new and better advice.
At the end of Grey St., the neighbour
who always collected the paper in his pyjamas
and said good morning in Latin
had shot his ever-yapping dog.
Small Empirical Study on Money and Love
Small empirical study on money and love
Three twelve-year-old girls
from the neighborhood
had stuck a pink plastic heart
to the pavement with superglue.
About 10% of the passers-by
bent down for it. Even men
tried to pick it up; they knelt
before the heart like knights
of Arthurian legend trying
to pull Excalibur from the stone.
About 200 metres away
the girls had stuck
a shiny two-dollar coin
with the same cyanoacrylate
of 1000 pounds/sq inch holding force
to the paving stones.
The result: roughly the same number
of attempts at each. Gender bias?
More women went for the heart;
and for the gold as well.
More older men in the rain.
And then this middle-aged woman
stomped on the heart
and roared into the shrubs:
‘We used to do those tricks
with fishing line. Seriously,
do you think you can fool me?!’
****
Kleine empirische Untersuchung zu Liebe und Geld
Drei zwölfjährige Nachbarsmädchen
hatten ein Talmiherz mit Sekundenkleber
auf den Bürgersteig geklebt.
Ungefähr 10% der Passanten
bückten sie danach. Sogar Männer
versuchten es aufzuheben;
sie knieten davor wie Ritter der Artussage,
die Exalibur dem Felsen entreißen wollen.
Ungefähr 200 m entfernt
hatten die Mädchen den Steinen
auch ein blankes Zwei-Dollar-Stück
mit Cyanacrylat von 1000 Pfund/cm2 Haltekraft
für eine vorstädtische Ewigkeit anvertraut.
Das Ergebnis: ungefähr gleich
viele Aufhebensversuche. Genderbias?
Beim Talmiherzen mehr Frauen,
beim Goldstück auch.
Mehr ältere Männer im Regen.
Und dann diese mittelalterliche Frau,
die ihren Schuh auf das Herz gesetzt hatte
und laut in die Büsche brüllte:
Wir haben das früher mit Angelschnüren
gespielt. Ihr wollt mich wohl
für dumm verkaufen?!
